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Crews building Trump border wall in drought-hit New Mexico ordered to stop drilling wells

Residents and farmers say contractors have tapped border aquifers that threaten water supply for those nearby

Construction crews building a border wall in New Mexico were ordered to stop drilling new wells after ranchers said that pumping groundwater to produce concrete could threaten their livestock amid a severe drought.

The order comes as crews across the southern border race to complete one of Donald Trump’s highest domestic priorities – barriers that span four states and received over $46bn in federal funding. Controversies have sprouted up in Texas and California, and border-town residents and environmentalists have reported a wide variety of issues with construction.

At a public meeting in July, ranchers said they were noticing unmonitored tapping of border aquifers that threatened the water for those nearby.

Crews building Trump border wall in drought-hit New Mexico ordered to stop drilling wellshttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/03/trump-border-wall-new-mexico-wellsOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
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Imagine what those billions could have been used on instead. Especially if you add all the money wasted on this stupid vanity project and the money wasted on ICE, and the money wasted on attacking Iran.

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The wall is useless.

We know how to build a border wall that works, there's one between North and South Korea, and there was one between East and West Berlin. That's what an effective wall looks like.

The walls they build on the Southern border of the U.S. look nothing like that because they're just political theater props. It's just cronyism.

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Also, parts of the border are a fucking river, so that part of the wall is inside the United States border, meaning that I don’t actually have to cross the wall to request asylum. And that leaves out the part where there are actually whole ranches and like a golf course on the other side of the wall because people didn’t want the wall going through their land.

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kbin.earth

Construction crews building a border wall in New Mexico were ordered to stop drilling new wells after ranchers said that pumping groundwater to produce concrete could threaten their livestock amid a severe drought...

At a public meeting in July, ranchers said they were noticing unmonitored tapping of border aquifers that threatened the water for those nearby.

“It would put us in an immediate catastrophe and having to do something with our livestock. I mean, it could potentially put some people out of business, us included,” said Russell Johnson, a cattle rancher whose property runs along the border.

Johnson raised the issue at the public meeting after noticing an industrial well, which drilling crews told him would pump 300 gallons a minute, on land he leases for grazing. Johnson has roughly 12 wells across his ranch, which pump between three and seven gallons a minute.

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You reached the end